Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Restaurant, café and pastry lab in Duomo (Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II), Milan
Cracco in Galleria
Dinner Upstairs in the Galleria
Carlo Cracco took a corner of the most photographed shopping arcade in Italy and stacked a whole food operation into it. Ground floor, Café Cracco, hand-painted walls, pastries made in the lab upstairs, an aperitivo out on the dehors. First floor, the restaurant: three dining rooms and two private rooms behind grey-blue boiserie. Through two small ivory doors, the Fumoir, a bar built around an original counter from the seventies. It is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, so yes, tourists. Lots of them.
The kitchen, run by Cracco with Luca Sacchi, holds a Michelin star. There are two tasting menus. La Galleria is the Milanese one: bread, polenta and bruscitt, rice with saffron and grilled bone marrow, veal breaded alla milanese, a dessert of three chocolates. Convito Felice is the free-range one, with caramelized Russian salad and frogs fried with sage. Go à la carte and you need at least two savory courses.
Is this the most exciting cooking in Milan? No. Is it a serious kitchen doing the city's classics properly, a short walk from the Duomo, in a room built to make an evening feel like an occasion? Yes. Take La Galleria if you have one night in town and want Milan on a plate. Skip it if you want to be surprised. Grab something sweet at the café counter on your way out.
- Order this
- La Galleria tasting menu, Saffron rice with grilled bone marrow, Veal breaded alla milanese, A pastry from Café Cracco on the way out
- The damage
- $$$$
- Go
- Dinner, when the Galleria crowds thin; the café downstairs takes no bookings
- Find it
- Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, 20121 Milano
- Website
- ristorantecracco.it